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A Simple Charge Controller Scheme Based on PWM

for Solar Standalone Lighting Systems
Ajit Pratap Singh Negi1, Deepak Bagai2, Rita Mahajan3,
1
Master of Engineering, 2Assistant Professor, 3Senior Lecturer,
E&EC Dept., PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh, India

Abstract – This paper proposes an energy efficient charge TABLE I

controller scheme for solar power based standalone lighting REMAINING FOSSIL FUEL SUPPLY IN NUMBER OF YEARS AND EXTRACTIBLE
VOLUME
systems. This concept is being given keeping in mind the Fossil Petroleum Uranium Natural Gas Coal
necessity, cost and importance of lighting in remote areas. The Fuel
proposed scheme comprises of efficient charging and discharging
of battery with a very well known technique, Pulse Width
Modulation (PWM). The scheme assumes d.c. operated WLED
lamp as its output light source due to its high luminosity and
Runs out 39.9 years 64.2 years 61 years 227
unprecedented characteristics. Thus, the whole system operates on
in (Date years
d.c. right away from solar panel output to battery to output light of (2001) (1999) (2001)
source. By varying the duty cycle of the d.c. current with PWM estimate) (2001)
technique the battery can be efficiently charged and discharged
through a common microcontroller circuitry thus bringing down
the cost. The battery terminal voltage acts as the feedback for
generation of PWM by microcontroller. As a result, light is Extractibl 1,046 3,95 150 984
e volume
available for longer hours, the battery works for longer life and the
Billion Million tons Trillion Billio
overall cost of the system may come out to be very low with a barrels cubic meters n tons
very bright clear WLED lighting, an ideal combination for energy
efficient solar power based standalone systems for lighting. technique that generates power from the sunlight falling on
the earth’s surface during the daytime. Solar power can be
Keywords – Battery, Charging, Discharging, Solar Energy, captured anywhere- buildings, offices, residential homes,
WLED lighting.
street lightings etc. Power will be generated wherever and
whenever the sun shines, irrespective of the remoteness of
I. INTRODUCTION
area.
In developing countries, there are many places and areas This solar panel based technology can be used to design
where there is still no availability of electricity. Also if and develop a self-powered system that can be used for
wires are running to the places there is still no guarantee of different purposes. Keeping the application in mind, a self-
power supply for the whole day. The people living there dependent solar power based lighting system can also be
either uses kerosene lamps or other such options for lighting developed. Since remote areas are under consideration, so
purposes. These alternatives either use conventional cost, energy efficiency and luminosity are the deciding
resources or burn fossil fuels that contribute to green house parameters as cost of a single battery and a single lighting
gas emissions making them the major contributors in global lamp plays a critical role in a family’s budget.
warming and pollution. Lighting in remote villages is still a
big problem. With the price of fuels soaring high and II. PROPOSED CONCEPT
depletion of current exhaustible natural resources, there is a
great need of an inexhaustible energy resource. Table I While designing a charge controller for a solar powered
shows how fossil fuel reserves are limited [1]. There can’t standalone lighting system few things are to be kept in
be a better option than an inexhaustible resource and most mind. The system should be low cost, energy efficient and
of the available flow of renewable energy comes from the no compromise should be done with the intensity of the
heat and light. output light. So apart from optimising the charge controller
Solar energy is a non-depleting gift from the nature to the circuit, proper charging and discharging of battery and
mankind. It is free, clean, safe and most important, selection of a suitable light lamp with bright light and high
unlimited. Solar power generation is a secure and clean efficiency are the challenges to be faced.

ISSN: 1792-4340 34 ISBN: 978-960-474-209-7

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TABLE II
A COMPARATIVE STUDY AMONG VARIOUS LIGHT LAMPS PRESENT TODAY
Lamp Type Efficiency Rated life Durability Power
(lumens/watt) (Hours) Consumption
Homemade 0.03 Supply of Fragile & 0.04 - 0.06
Kerosene kerosene dangerous litres/hour
Incandescent 5-18 1000 Very fragile 5W
Compact 30-79 6500-15,000 Very fragile 4W
Fluorescent
WLED 25-50 50,000 Durable 1W
WLED lights being energy efficient have high luminous
efficiency as compared to the present conventional light
lamps and are thus considered as future light source due to
their unprecedented characteristics. Table II presents a
comparative study among various light lamps present today
[2]. The scheme thus assumes WLED lamp as its output
light source. Since WLED works on d.c. thus the necessity
of including a inverter circuit is avoided. Now the whole
system operates on d.c. right away from solar panel output
to battery to output light source and thus the charge
controller becomes a simple low cost circuitry.
The PWM is applied in a manner that the battery neither
remains undercharged nor gets overcharged or deep-
discharged [3]. The charge content of battery is monitored
and controlled with the help of a microcontroller which
generates the necessary PWM by reading the voltage across
the terminals of the battery and accordingly varies the duty
cycle of the d.c. current supplied by the solar panel to the
battery to prevent overcharging of battery. Battery when
fully charged can be used for switching on a WLED lamp.
The same circuitry similarly functions again to monitor the
voltage across battery’s terminal and controls the light
intensity of lamp by varying the duty cycle of the d.c.
supplied by the battery to the lamp [4]. Since human eye is
not able to perceive the quick flickering in light brought out
by PWM, this technique provides an efficient discharging
of energy stored in battery. As soon as the battery voltage
level drops below a critical discharge value, the
microcontroller disconnects the lamp from the battery thus
preventing drainage of battery. Thus, light is available for
longer hours although of decreasing intensity but from point
of view of remote areas where there is no availability of
electricity, the brightness of obtained light is sufficient for
proper illumination. Also since battery is efficiently utilized
in both charging and discharging process through a
common charge controller circuitry, the battery works for
longer life and the overall cost of the system may come out
to be very low with a very bright clear WLED lighting, an
ideal combination for a energy efficient solar power based
ISSN: 1792-4340 35
Correlated Colour Colour $ After 50,000 hours
Temperature (K) Rendering
(CCT) Index (CRI)
1800 approx. 80 approx. 1251
2652 98 175
4200 62 75
5000 82 20
standalone systems for lighting.
III. BASIC CHARGE CONTROLLER MODEL
Fig. 1 shows a simple charge controller circuit. A
switching device (MOSFET M in this case) along with a
comparator connects or disconnects the panels from the
battery terminals. The comparator measures the voltage
across the battery’s terminals, through a voltage divider
formed by R1 and R2, and compares it continuously with a
set reference value voltage. As soon as the cut-off voltage is
reached the comparator switches off the MOSFET thus
disconnecting the panel and the battery. This is done to
prevent the overcharging of the battery. Also the battery is
connected to the light lamp which when required can be
turned on by switch S.
There are certain problems with this system. Since a
predefined reference cut-off is set, the battery will not be
charged above a certain value and thus always remains
undercharged. Also, since the lamp is directly connected to
the battery, it will try to extract most of power from it thus
causing drainage of the battery. In both cases, the battery is
used very inefficiently, undercharged in one and deep-
discharged in other. This leads to battery’s life getting
shorter with time. If somehow, the reference voltage of the
comparator can be made to vary, the battery can be charged
to the full value. Also, there should be a provision to
prevent overcharging of battery. Also the light source
should be prevented from discharging the battery to the
deep-discharge region.
IV. IMPROVED CHARGE CONTROLLER MODEL
The proposed model is totally operational on PWM
technique. The charging and discharging of battery is
governed by the voltage across the terminals of the battery
at any instant. Both phenomena occur through the same
microcontroller based circuit as shown in the Fig. 2. The
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Fig.1.A Simple Charge Controller Model
MOSFET M acts as the switching device and isolates the
circuits across its source and drain [5]. During charging
case, it connects or disconnects the solar panel from the
battery bank and during discharging, WLED lamp from the
battery. The switching of MOSFET is controlled by a
comparator circuit. The comparator measures the voltage
across the terminals of the battery through a voltage divider,
formed by R1 and R2, and compares it with the PWM
signal generated by the microcontroller. R3 and C generate
the necessary ramp signal to be fed as input in the
comparator. The microcontroller also monitors the voltage
across the battery’s terminals through another voltage
divider with the aid of an ADC and generates the PWM
accordingly.
The idea is to control the duty cycle of the d.c. current
flowing through the system with the help of PWM pulses
generated by the microcontroller. The duty cycle of these
PWM pulses is varied as accordance to the voltage of the
battery. Initially when the battery is discharged (Switch S1
connected to PV panel and S2 to battery), its terminal
voltage is less than the set reference voltage. In this case,
the MOSFET is made to remain fully on by applying the
PWM of duty cycle 100% to the positive terminal of
comparator input thus connecting the terminals of the solar
panel directly to the battery terminals. This leads to
immediate or bulk charging of the battery. With time, when
the charge content of the battery increases and reaches
equal to the reference value, the pulse charging of battery
can be accomplished. The duty cycle of the pulses can be
varied by monitoring the terminal voltage of the battery. A
look up table of battery voltage and PWM duty cycle can be
pre-set and stored in the microcontroller. The controller will
monitor the battery voltage and will generate PWM of duty
cycle corresponding to that voltage. For example, for a
voltage of 12.10V, duty cycle of 80%, for 12.15V duty
cycle of 75% etc. The look-up table can be made more
precise by breaking the voltage intervals to smaller values
and so the duty cycles. As the battery voltage increases, the
duty cycle is made to decrease so that battery keeps on
charging with decreasing frequent pulses of current. When
the battery reaches its full capacity, the duty cycle will be
ISSN: 1792-4340
so small that it will help battery retain the full charge by
continuously applying very short pulses of current, thus
preventing the simultaneous discharging of battery. During
charging, the whole circuitry is powered by the solar panel.
Now when the WLED lamp is turned on (Switch S1
connected to Battery and S2 to WLED lamp), the same
whole circuitry now gets powered by the battery. The
microcontroller monitors the battery terminal voltage and
generates PWM of duty cycle corresponding to it. In this
case also a look-up table is pre-set and stored in controller’s
memory. Till when the battery voltage is high, PWM pulses
of large duty cycle can be sent. For example, for voltage of
12 volt, duty cycle of 90%, for 11.80 duty cycle of 85% etc.
The comparator will compare the pulses with battery
terminal voltage and will keep the MOSFET on
accordingly. Thus, d.c. current from battery to LED lamp is
not continuous but in the form of PWM pulses. These
pulses will produce flickering in the WLED lamp light but
they will be too quick to be perceived by a human eye. Thus
what will be received is a bright white light of WLED. Now
as the battery voltage decreases, the duty cycle of pulses is
also made to decrease through the look-up table. This is
done to utilize only a small power from the battery due to
which battery discharges slowly and can supply power for a
longer duration. At a certain cut-off voltage, the duty cycle
is set to zero thus disconnecting battery from the light lamp.
This cut-off voltage is the critical voltage below which the
battery goes into deep-discharge region. Thus, by giving
PWM pulses the battery is prevented from drainage
condition with no compromise on the part of light intensity.
Although the intensity of light decreases slowly with
decrease in duty cycles the system achieve its primary goal
of illuminating room for longer hours. Keeping in mind that
the lighting model is being designed for standalone systems
of remote areas, enough lighting may be achieved with high
energy efficiency through this simple energy efficient
charge controller scheme.
V. CONCLUSION
With the use of solar power based technologies the
dependency on exhaustible natural resources can be easily
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Fig.2.Improved Charge Controller Model

reduced. And with the further use of modern technology remote villages in developing countries can be easily
like microcontrollers and technique like PWMs in solar achieved.
power based applications, these systems can be designed to
provide high efficiency. Through the proposed model, the REFERENCES
challenges of circuit optimisation, energy saving, better
[1] http://www.numericups.com
bright lighting altogether may be efficiently covered at low [2] http://www.lutw.org
prices. [3] http://wikipedia.com
Thus, the sole purpose of providing a low cost solar [4] Raghavan Sampath, “Green Lighting : Solar Based HBLED Lighting
power based standalone lighting system to the residents of Solutions,” Energy, Electronicsmaker, October 2008.
[5] Supratim Basu, Lars Norum and Dhaval Dalal, ” An Improved PV
Battery Charger for Low Cost Low Power Stand Alone Low Power
Systems,” ICSET,2008.

ISSN: 1792-4340 37 ISBN: 978-960-474-209-7